


A Worse Resurrection

by disastrous_detail



Category: Elder Scrolls
Genre: Body Horror, Death, Grief/Mourning, Other, Possibly Unrequited Love, Pre-Daggerfall, Slight Canon Divergence, a side of mannimarco/vanus if you squint, also a heaping of Mannimarco's existential dread, post-Final Battle, slight gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disastrous_detail/pseuds/disastrous_detail
Summary: Vanus's heart will always belong to the King of Worms.
Kudos: 9





	A Worse Resurrection

“A thousand apologies, my lord.”

Mannimarco turns from his current object of fascination— a colossal soul gem hewn from the depths. Collected by himself, of course, he doesn’t trust his own eremites with much, and he trusts his acolytes with even less.

One of these such acolytes stands in the doorway. Not quite a novitiate anymore. Mannimarco can tell by the crimson sash around their waist, not because he knows them personally, and they’re of indeterminate gender, hood-shadow obscuring their features.

And he has half the mind to leave the speaker a smear on the cave walls for the intrusion, but there’s urgency and a flash of excitement in their eyes, not just fear. This stays his hand.

The acolytes waits for him to answer.

“Yes?”

“We found him.” The acolyte breathes. Mannimarco’s telekinetic grasp on the soul gem wavers for only a split second.

“Vanus.”

“We took him to your laboratory, your grace.”

Mannimarco lowers the soul gem back into its chamber, and the obsidian lid shudders into place. He hovers over to the acolyte, and for once, he gets a good look at them. A human girl, pale skin, a smattering of freckles across her cheeks, and wide, wide hazel eyes.

Those eyes widen more as she gets a good look at him, sees that he has shed his skin and flesh, mortal coils. Only bones remain, calcified and transmuted into stronger forms, immune to mage-fire and mundane weapons. The lesser weight gives him the gift of levitation.

“Well done.” His voice rattles, grave.

“See to it that you visit Eremite Calpurnia. It wouldn’t do for you to remain an acolyte any longer.”

The acolyte bows out of the study, and she leaves Mannimarco, Black and Crimson King of Worms, of Hallowed Bones.

And yet, he is none of these when he enters his laboratory.

There lies a corpse on a dark stone slab, a pale sheet draped over the form, and all titles and accomplishments are stripped of him.

For now, it is just him, Mannimarco, the wayward Psijiic monk, and that shy boy named ‘Vanus’ who slipped up and introduced himself as Trechtus.

There is no hate, but neither is there grief. Those absolutes died with him the second time. 

What burns where Mannimarco’s heart once was transforms into something else. An emotion he refuses to give name, and he instead lifts the sheet.

Vanus, stripped of his robes in death, looks so small on the slab. Withered. His once sun-warmed gold skin is bleached grey. Black spots of decomposition center around his mouth and nose, half-hidden by a pale beard that goes down to his chest, and an unkempt moustache hides purple lips. All certain signs of death.

Mannimarco still shines a small nimbus of light into Vanus's clouded blue eyes. Nothing. The muscles are dead.

Vanus is dead.

 _Dead_.

The last time death took Mannimarco, it was the last time he saw Vanus alive, rushing towards him, spell crackling in hand.

And when slung, the spell laid waste to Mannimarco’s mage wards, thralls, and minions alike. He does not remember how it killed him, whether he had the chance to hurt or not, for the worst of death is behind him once again.

What he does remember is the spell hurtling towards him, and the grim satisfaction in knowing the spell leeched Vanus of his life-magicka, to a fatal extent. Perhaps this was the best death for Vanus, dying to defeat his oldest rival.

A skeletal hand gingerly comes to rest on his cold forehead, or at least, Mannimarco imagined that it would be cold.

Vanus looked only a year or two away from having his mind withering away like the rest of his body. Dying may have been a clemency, such are the ravages of mortality.

He reaches for the embalming tools, cuts Vanus open, and watches his blood go down the drain, still unsure whether he is going to embalm him or not. The motions are practiced. Precise.

He doesn’t remember how many corpses he dissected, as he had been doing so long before he became a necromancer. In order to understand how the body worked and how it failed, one needed to get to the root of the problem. Autopsies were a vital part of the Psijiic’s curriculum, as to better understand anatomy and inevitable death.

Mannimarco always had an interest in them, watching them, doing them. Not because he was a necromancer. Not back then.

Back then, he had been certain he would become a healer instead.

_Vanus had squirmed so much that day, practically hiding behind Mannimarco when they were presented a cadaver to dissect. An exam, of sorts, and failing this meant_ _failing the entire course._

_“But it’s…” Vanus threw a nervous glance around the room. He was Iachesis’s golden child, and failing a course looked bad not only on Vanus but on the Ritemaster as well._

_Mannimarco had never seen Vanus’s usual confidence evaporate so quickly. His voice was pinched and his gaze darted about the room. It couldn’t be the viscera._

_Their cadaver was merely a_ _pirate, if Mannimarco had overheard the dock guards properly, who had been sentenced to hang. A person no one would miss. Magic had kept the body from deteriorating on the voyage over here, but death exaggerated the black and blue bruises around their throat. The other corpses were in much worse condition._

 _Across the room and behind wards, a few students dealt with the long-decomposed corpse. Mannimarco envied them. The cause of death was obvious on this body, and prying it open wouldn’t be a challenge. Vanus’s anxieties had to come from something else._ _Mannimarco stole a glance at the instructor, who fussed over a pair of students across the room, and murmured to Vanus,_

_“Just hand me the tools when I tell you.”_

_Vanus sent him a grateful look. A shaking hand placed a scalpel in his, and several smart cuts of the scalpel later, they stared down at exposed ribs, and the precious dark organs behind them. Visceral fat covered it all in a thin layer, and it now ran down the sides, pooling as a greasy mess. Mannimarco held out a hand._

_“Rib shears.”_

Vanus’s ribs are calcified and hard with age. They crack and splinter under the instrument. Mannimarco cuts through them, but he still hasn’t decided _why_. He delicately places the cut ribs aside and admires his handiwork.

Muscle and skin have been peeled away from the torso. Barely any visceral fat covers Vanus’s organs. Those organs are discolored, brownish and black, as rot had not set in completely. It never will. He will not allow it.

Mannimarco wonders what had killed Vanus. Had the exertion caused his organs to fail? His heart? Mannimarco hovers over the slab now like a specter. He could dissect it to see if it were true, but he doesn’t. He hesitates, and instead, he remembers the sound of its pulse, the vibration against his ears. The feel of it. The warmth of his touch.

He now knows why he has pried open Vanus’s chest cavity.

“ _Vanus.” They sit now, privately, in his open chambers once upon a summer that was too fair and too generous on the island that Mannimarco would soon leave. Forever, hopefully._

_The sea stretched beyond, the deepest blue, and threw its waves against the cliffside, where the balcony was perched a top of. Here, above the cliffs and the warmth of summer, Mannimarco considered how to say goodbye to not only his rival, but his friend, his colleague, the one he treasured the most in this world._

_And Mannimarco treasured him so much more than what laid in the bounds of friendship, but he wouldn’t ruin what they had now._ _Vanus’s heart was faint underneath his vestments, those of a full-fledged monk, and he stirred where he sat by Mannimarco’s side._

_“What’s the matter?”_

_Mannimarco stared down at the surf below, too blue._

_“I’ve been offered a position as court physician in Shimmerene.”_

_“Really? But I thought…”_

_Originally, he had considered staying here with Vanus, continuing his research at the Ceporah Tower, but the opportunity had dropped into his lap, and he’d be a fool to not take it. He stole a glance at Vanus._

_“I’m leaving. I don’t know when I’ll be coming back.”_

_“You’re never coming back.” Vanus smiled sadly, then laughed as if he wasn’t devastated._

_“I know you too well.”_

_“As I know you.” Mannimarco clenched and unclenched his robe. If there was ever a chance to say anything, it was now. This moment. Before it was too late._

_He needed to say something._

_“You could come with me.” His suggestion was met with lonely silence._

_“You know I can’t.”_

_“I could help you.” Mannimarco added,_

_“I know you’re trying to form that fraternity. We could form contacts, garner influence, political alliances…”_

_Vanus was already shaking his head before Mannimarco could finish his sentence._

_“Iachesis says—”_

_“Iachesis says…” Mannimarco repeated, annoyed with the phrase that Vanus always threw around. Always a goody-two-shoes. Vanus drew in a deep breath,_

_“Iachesis and I have arranged to meet with King Rilis. I can’t just leave now. Not after working on this speech for this long. You know how long it took! You were there!”_

_Mannimarco let out a long-suffering sigh._

_“How could I forget?”_

_He had been the one to pick apart draft of Vanus’s written speech for grammatical errors and word choice. Vanus leaned in closed and squeezed Mannimarco’s hands in his own._

_“Why don’t you just stay, and we could go together? I know what kind of orator you are. You could convince a man the sky’s green, if you wanted.”_

_Mannimarco had his experiments, some more ethical than not. The longer he kept them here, the sooner Vanus and everyone would learn. That could not happen. The hopeful expression on Vanus’s face made it all that harder to turn him down, and potentially everything else between them._

_But Mannimarco had his experiments, studies of reanimation and first forays into necromancy, and he wouldn’t give them up for anything._

Countless years gone by, Mannimarco hovers over his collection of tomes and relics from an age that his following do not understand.

His hallowed bones are now brittle. Enchantments and transmutations can only stave off the decay of time for so long, and so he drifts and sits with his crystalline and silver box clutched in skeletal hands. His time to shed this final mortal coil draws near.

From within the box, he withdraws a calcified heart and closes his fingers over the still object. The door to his study opens, and in walks the Agent-Girl, sent to Daggerfall by the Emperor himself. She is Altmer, golden-skin, gold eyes, and silvery hair. She reminds him of himself, in his youth: selfish, cunning, bold, and fearful. It is no surprise at all that she has survived every test of mettle he has sent her way, and always, she impresses him.

Today, they will be discussed their next move, safe from the eavesdropping ears of his guards.

The Agent quirks a thin brow, never knowing Mannimarco to be sentimental.

“What’s that?”

“Just my heart, dear.”  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i don't really know why suddenly got to the urge to go: 'oh! i want to write a gorey fic about mannimarco dissecting vanus's corpse!' it just happened. just in time for halloween too. wow. 
> 
> also! on mannimarco's choice to leave the psijiic isle instead being banished: 
> 
> if this was part of a larger work, this would be a prologue, and the rest of the work would be describing mannimarco's life as a court wizard/healer, being wrapped up in countless political schemes (like 200+ years worth of them), and eventually, the stress of it all wears him down. he has a mental breakdown, takes up necromancy, forms the worm cult, and becomes vanus galerion's sworn enemy. 
> 
> so, it'd be like a sort-of-good-guy goes full villain arc. i mostly disregard eso! mannimarco 
> 
> but funnily enough, someone also made a comment on tumblr about mannimarco potentially being the group healer when he was with the 5 companions so... yeah


End file.
